Design a Great Logo

Planning and Inspiration

Choosing a Logo to Design
All you need is a company or individual whose logo you would like to design or re-design!
- Choose a company or an individual to create a logo for.
- Describe your company or individual using these five criteria: age, gender, education level, income level, and locale (urban, suburban, rural).
- Create five mood boards of inspirational swipe for the logo you intend to create that relate to the company or individual of your choice. Organize them by concept, typography, icons, color, and composition. Twenty-five pieces of swipe in each category is sufficient.
For example, these are Stephanie Faye's mood boards from a previous session. She did a wonderful job of collecting and sorting swipe.
- Concept
- Typography
- Composition
- Color
- Icons
Please post your mood boards for discussion before noon on Saturday, July 27th.

Sketching Lots of Ideas

Ask yourself these questions:
- Which typographic and pictorial elements are absolutely necessary in order to communicate the business of your client?
- When the logo needs to be copied as a small, black and white image, will all elements translate well?
- Is a logo mark necessary?
- Is color necessary?
- If color is necessary, what colors are appropriate?
- Again, simplify, simplify, simplify.
Sketch out your logos:
- Then select concepts, typography, and compositions and begin sketching. Please do not go directly to your computer for this step. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Create logo sketches using pencil or pen and paper. Make many, many, many sketches.
- Sketch out every combination of type and mark you can think of. Also create separate mark and type options. Draw out your ideas by hand, however rudimentary. This is stage in which accidents become your best logo designs.
- Try out the three main selling tactics used to seduce an audience: emotion, humor, and intellect.
- And, try out my basic formulas for type lock ups—square ups, rag right and left, first and last letters larger, lozenge, fit in shape, run around picture/icon, Hollywood boulevard, intertwined letterforms. (see end of this doc for examples)
Some tips:
- It’s a good idea to keep a notebook with you at all times so that when you see or think of something you like, you can immediately apply those ideas to your logo. Snap an idea with your phone camera where ever you are and include it among your "swipe" to draw on for sketches.
- If you hit a wall, stop for a bit, do something else. Then come back and sketch more logo options.
Share your best 25 sketches for feedback
Sketch, sketch, sketch. I can't emphasize this enough. Your sketches don't have to be perfect. They don't have to be pretty. You just need to get your ideas on paper (as opposed to computer for this assignment, please). Start right away. Carry a sketchbook and use it. Sketch anything that comes to mind. These can be rebounds from your swipe, adaptations from something you saw on the street, etc. Post twenty five sketches for discussion before noon on Saturday, August 3rd.

Move to Finish with Your Best Logo Sketches

Choose Your Strongest Sketches, Move To Rough Drafts
There are loads of ways to create logos:
- You can do it by hand
- If you're good with Illustrator, you can use it.
- You can cut and paste shapes
- You can draw the typography or choose a font.
Most importantly, have fun, do what comes naturally, follow your instincts. They're probably spot on!

Review of Your Logo Finishes

Post Your Finished Logos!
Based on feedback from me and your classmates as well as your own inclinations and feedback from friends and/or clients, render a few finished (rough comps are fine for now) logos and post. Try two or three so that you can see how your best sketches come to life. Be sure to include both color and black and white versions of your logos.

**Please post by noon on Sunday, August 11th.

Additional Resources

Questions to ask yourself as you go through this process:
- What should the mood/style/look of the logo be in order to convey the business of your client?
- How is that mood/style/look reflected in your concepts, typography, and logo mark choices?
Research logo design, both via the links I've provided and on your own. "Swipe" work you like and note why. Don’t forget to credit the work you’ve swiped. Think in terms of concept, typography, composition, icons, and color.

Check out these websites for examples of great logo design:
- Eight Hour Day: http://eighthourday.com/works/
- Mgmt Design, http://mgmtdesign.com/work.html?id=1,5,50
- Experimental Jetset: http://www.experimentaljetset.nl/archive/104-2007.html
- Type Everything: http://typeverything.com/
- Cardon Webb: http://www.cardonwebb.com/works/logos/
- Dan Cassaro: http://youngjerks.com/
- Jon Contino: http://joncontino.com/
- Louise Fili: http://www.louisefili.com/logos/good-housekeeping/
- Emir Ayouni: http://dribbble.com/growcase
- Paul Saksin: http://dribbble.com/ino
- Two Arms Inc. http://twoarmsinc.com/work/category/identity
- Corporate Branding: http://www.brandingidentitydesign.com/
- Jeremy Mickel: http://www.mckltype.com/logos/
- Carlos Pagan: http://www.carlospagan.com/portfolio/by-category/6
- http://dribbble.com/poly_studio
- http://dribbble.com/AdamTrageser
- http://dribbble.com/jonassoeder
- http://dribbble.com/slaterdesign
- http://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/articles/logo-design-trend-showcase-retro-emblems-badges
- http://dribbble.com/adline
- http://dribbble.com/michaelspitz
As you can see, I tracked some of these designers on Dribbble. Dribbble is a great resource for finding inspiring design and inspiring logo design. Have a look. Search under desginers/logos/identity.

Also, have a look at these PDFs I made for you:
- Logos and Their Stories
- Identity Designer Resources
You may execute your logos by hand or in a software of your choice. A favorite among designers is Adobe Illustrator because you're able to create finely tuned vector graphics and typography. If you are interested in learning more about Illustrator, these Adobe tutorials may be helpful for understanding the basics of how to create a logo in Illustrator:
- Getting Started with Illustrator: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?l=-1&cat=212&event=producthome&s=5&exc=17
Play, have fun, don’t restrain yourself.
- Herbert Matter went through hundreds of ideas before arriving at the final New Haven Railroad logo, see many of them here: http://vimeo.com/7100682
- Typography lock up examples: There are several general display font (as opposed to text font) lockups that are widely used. I made a PDF to show those to you. Try them out. They may help you explore different ways to use type in your logo design
- Chris Beesley's sketches for several clients
- The importance of sketching and why you should do it
- The Role of Sketching in the Design process
- The Benefits of Sketching Logo Ideas
- How Important Is Sketching for Your Designing?
- How Sketching Will Take Your Design Process to the Next Level
We’re almost there, now it is time to take some of your sketches and make them polished designs.
- Check out this PDF I put together for more information, Collateral Examples
Also, some free resources for fonts and help with fonts:

John Somers

Visual designer

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